The Hadfield Halloween party was on Saturday, Oct. 26th.  This also happened to be the day we did family pictures :)  After pictures up the canyon, we sped back down with a brief stop by Denise's house to drop off final copies of the Primary program for the next day - just in case I failed to make it to sacrament meeting, as often happens.  We got home and hurried to change into our costumes and head to Mom's house.  Most of my pictures were blurry :(, but fortunately, Mom put hers in our Dropbox folder, so I can have some less than blurry ones :)

To be honest, I was much more excited for Henlie and Matt's costumes than my own.  In fact, I pretty much just threw mine together.

Matt was Dr. Robert Chase from House.  We've been watching House for awhile (the last disc should come in the mail from Netflix today - so sad!) Anyway, he and Chase are a lot alike and even kind of look like each other, so I decided that was who he was going to be for Halloween haha.  We bought the labcoat, borrowed the stethoscope, and I edited a replicated name tag off of DeviantArt (thank you thank you thank you person with mad artistic skills! haha) and used a clip from his old missionary tag to attach it to his coat.



I had already planned Henlie's costume when I was pregnant based off of the onesie I bought on Zulily.  And then I found the shoes on Zulily while still pregnant haha.  I made her ears and her tail.  There is a wire hanger in them to give them shape, unfortunately, that made her tail pretty heavy, so I had to pin it to her shirt if I wanted it to stay up :)  I glued the ears onto clips so we could put them right in her hair or on a headband.  We went with a headband this year.  I then drew on her face with eyeliner.  She rubbed her nose right off and I had to reapply when we got in the house.  Isn't she an adorable little cheetah/leopard/something cat?


I was Little Red Riding Hood.  I've had this red cape for ages (and yes, it does have a hood, I'm just not wearing it :))  I was going to wear my broomstick skirt, but it turns out I'd already given it to the DI :) So, I was a little more modern in my under-cape attire.  I bought the basket at DI for $1 on the same shopping trip I picked up Matt's lab coat (at *not* the DI - that's a full price actual lab coat, friends.  The store was just really close to the DI :))  I put a jar of honey in it and wrapped a Powerade or Gatorade bottle in a linen dishcloth to make it look like a loaf of bread.  The basket was also a handy place for my phone and the aforementioned eyeliner. Oh, and Mocha's headband. Yeah, we had the dog, too :)


So, Mocha! I'd almost forgotten her :) (Neither picture is from the party... apparently we didn't love her enough to take any of her that night haha)  Zulily had dog costumes on one day for actually decent prices, and there was the cutest butterfly costume.  At the time, I had money, so I ordered it for her.  Now our puppy has two to choose from :)



Mostly we hung out and had some dinner.  There was also an activity going on downstairs for the kids, and then there was the chicken dance performed upstairs haha  We love getting to spend time with our family!  And now, some random pictures from the evening. Enjoy!

Okay, now that I have Henlie's birthday posts up, we need to backtrack a little bit.  Recall our busy day on Tuesday, Oct. 22nd?  Well, we had another fun-filled day on Thursday, Oct. 24th too.

We had tried to take Charlie and Henlie swimming earlier, but the pool was closed for cleaning.  Since we had another warm spell (yay!), we tried again.  Fortunately, the pool was open.  They previously had issues with the pool cover, and I hadn't been since it had been fixed.  It took me a minute to find where to open it now.  Camile had the girls in the bathroom with her while I opened the pool.

We had lots of fun playing with Charlie and Camile in the pool.  It was great because no one else was there :)  Henlie loved it, for the most part ;)  We practiced floating, and there were even a couple of times I could remove one hand for a second.  We tried going underwater, and she did okay with it.  Good thing too because on one trip to sit on the top step, we didn't quite reach, and she fell under.  She didn't seem too traumatized by it.  We had fun playing with Charlie's squirt toys and kicking our frog beach ball.  She loved it when I'd bounce up and down (I was so sore for a couple of days after this...)  She thought it was funny when I'd blow bubbles under the water.  Now we have a whole lot of swim diapers to use before she gains another 6 pounds :)  Too bad I hate walking to the pool in the cold!

I started planning Henlie's birthday party between 9 and 10 months.  Granted, initially it took me awhile to decide on a theme lol.  Once that was decided, I could get into full planning mode.  The last month to month and a half has been actually putting things together for her party.  Yay for Pinterest! hahaha

Initially the theme was "vintage" but it turned a bit into "shabby chic." The final theme was Purple and Pearls.

Once I was finished eating, we got down to the presents!






After presents, we stripped her down and let her have her cake.  After her birthday photoshoot on Halloween, she had a better idea of what this was for and how to do it :)







Thanks to everyone who came to our little party! We had a great time and Henlie got some wonderful gifts that she truly enjoys!

It's pretty crazy to think it has been a year since we welcomed a tiny little baby into our lives.  She has been the most exhausting, trying, fun, and rewarding little person.  I love watching her grow and learn, explore and test her limits.  It has been fun to watch her personality emerge as she becomes her own person.  She's a charmer.  She's observant.  She's also sneaky.

This month, we were really affected by separation anxiety, but only with sleeping and directly after napping.  During the day, she is fine going off and playing on her own, or hanging out with Grandma or the ladies in the primary presidency.  At night (or nap time, sometimes), it could be a lot harder to get out of her room.  Usually she's okay at the beginning of the night, but if she wakes up, it can be a challenge to get her back to sleep.  We would lay her back down, and she would lay there (which she has been preferring her tummy with her legs tucked under her), then sit up and look for us.  Once she saw us, she would lay back down for a minute.  This would happen for quite awhile, and then sometimes she would get too awake and start grinning at us and wanting to play.  It made for some long nights.  We had even started bringing her to our bed when she woke up in the early morning, just to get a little bit more sleep.  (It seemed to get everyone a bit more sleep, at least :)) With napping, if she woke up crying, she would be awfully clingy for a good while before she would be okay go-go-going again.  Like, I couldn't even set her on the floor next to me to do something that required two hands (like put on a jacket to take the dog out).  Her life is rough.


In order to help her get to sleep (which she got better later in the month with sleeping again.  It is probably just a teething thing.  Oh those teeth.....) I have started singing to her.  Primary songs.  We start with I Am a Child of God, and sometimes I pull them up on my phone and we just keep singing songs.  I still prefer nights she falls asleep after nursing and I can just lay her down without incident, though :)

As for eating, I have still been buying jarred baby food.  Mostly because it's easier and I'm sure it's a more healthy option than what I may find for her otherwise.  Most of the time, I don't even know what to do for myself for lunch.... At the beginning of the month, we were still nursing between 4 and 6 times in a 24 hour period (4 if she didn't wake at night, and another 1 or 2 times if she needed it to calm down to go back to sleep in the middle of the night).  She doesn't nurse for super long, so pumping at work is a little discouraging.  I rarely get more than 1.5 ounces per session.  Oh well :)  For that reason, I think weaning would be kind of nice (that, and it takes a serious chunk out of my shift to go pump twice in a shift).  




She wasn't so cooperative for pictures this month.  I just let her hair air dry after her bath, so it's kind of shaggy, too :)


At the end of the month, nursing was down to four times total.  Then right around her birthday, we dropped to three.  That same week, I dropped to one pumping session at work.  Weaning is around the corner!
 
About a week after turning 11 months, we introduced whole milk.  I know it is supposed to be at the one year mark, but surely some babies are developed enough to handle it before then.  Mostly, we were getting low on formula, and I didn't necessarily want to buy more.  I only put the milk in her oatmeal in the morning.  This also helps cut down on dishes since I don't have to fix a bottle to make her cereal with.  She has had no problems with the milk at all.  We ran out of formula just over a week before her birthday, so she now even gets to drink it from a cup or bottle when Mommy is at work.

Her tooth count at one year is four.  It seems once the first one broke through, all of the others that were making their way down wanted to join the party.  We thought the fourth tooth on top had broken through, but now, I don't think it did.  However, right around her birthday, she got her first bottom tooth! Center right.  However, going most of the month with only top teeth has made biting things a little difficult.  She has tried biting her Gerber's Lil' Curnchies (like cheetohs, but in multiple flavors).  It's fun to hear them crunch, but having no bottom teeth makes it hard to get all the way through them, so she ends up popping the whole thing in her mouth. :)

She loves books.  I know I mentioned last month her love of Moo, Baa, La La La! but now she loves turning pages and carting them around the house too.  It's super cute.  She'll even flip through the pages of a couple of small notebooks we have laying around.  She also will bring us a book.  She loves to sit back while we read to her.  She's pretty adorable.


As for speaking, she has a few "words" that sometimes even mean what they are supposed to.  "Ball" is the one that really means small round object.  She also says "mama" and "dada" (okay, like "dadadadadada").  I'm not sure she always means us when she says them though :)  We've also been practicing "duck" a little bit.  

She loves to play with the dog.  She will take Mocha's toys and run off with them.  Even if the dog isn't actually chasing after her, she thinks it's funny to run from the puppy.  She will bring us Mocha's squeaky gecko or spider for us to throw to the puppy.  The dog sometimes brings them back to Henlie.  Other times, Henlie goes to retrieve them herself from Mocha, only to give them to us to throw for the dog again.  I guess if our dog can't learn the concept of the game of fetch, between the two of them, we can play :)

She has become quite independent and has her own opinions about things.  Too bad she doesn't speak, so we have to resort to crying and tantrums.  (Whenever she's upset, she always throws her head and body backwards.  She usually hits her head, which results in more crying. I can't wait until she outgrows that reflex.)  She is getting better with walking and has ventured into some running.  It's cute.  Since she is so independent, it is super nice when she'll take us by the hand while we're walking somewhere.  It's also nice when she comes up and gives you a hug.  Sometimes she'll grab my legs from behind, and I'll peek down and play peek-a-boo between my legs.  She thinks that's funny.  I think it's adorable ;) 

We visited the doctor again for her 12 month check the morning of her birthday.  They are participating in a vaccine study to get another provider registered in the U.S. for the MMR vaccine.  We enrolled Henlie, so we were there for two hours.... that didn't help my party preparations :)  Poor girl got the standard 4 vaccines, plus a flu shot.  Then, for the vaccine study, they drew blood to get a baseline.  Since they were drawing blood and the iron indicator from her finger prick indicated her iron level might be a little low, we okayed them to take more blood to send to the lab to verify.  Poor girl didn't bleed quite enough for both tests on the first arm, so they had to draw blood from the second arm.  That was a total of 8 bandaids.  She wasn't a happy camper, even though they gave her a sucker during the blood draws.





She had fallen asleep on the way to the doctor's office.  After her ordeal at the doctor's she fell asleep again on the way home.  I let her nap in her car seat when we got home, and she felt better after that.  


Her measurements this month: weight=20 lbs 2 oz (56%), height=29.9 in (77%), and head circumference=17.7 in (52%).  We also got the lab results on her iron later that evening, and her levels were great.  She's a healthy little girl growing like a weed :)

Mocha had a grooming appointment at the Orem Petco on Tuesday, Oct. 22.  They have a four hour window to groom her, so we ran some errands while we were up that way.  After we dropped Mocha off (which the baby fell asleep on the way to Orem), we stopped at the post office to buy some stamps and mail her birthday invites to those who are out of town.  I believe she woke up while we were there.  Next, we headed up to Lehi to see Grandma and Grandpa Hadfield and give them their invitation.

A friend or cousin (or someone like that) of Grandma's answered the door.  She said they were in the shop, so we walked over there.  The back door was locked, so we knocked and waited.  Then we went around to the front door, which was also locked.  We knocked and waited.  We were just turning around to walk back to the house when Grandma and Grandpa pulled up.  I guess they'd been down to McDonald's for some lunch :)  For reasons unknown, they came home with an extra Diet Coke, which Grandma let me have lol

We chatted for a bit and gushed over Henlie :)  Then we went into the bedroom where they have toys stored, and Henlie played with legos.  While we were playing, Amy (Grandma's daughter) and her half-brother Spence stopped by.  While Grandma was busy with them, Grandpa, Henlie, and I went out to the swingset to try swinging.  Grandpa's little swing no longer has a seatbelt, so Henlie had a hard time staying in it.  That was okay, though, because there was the cat, JJ, and a whole bunch of leaves to play with.




After Grandma, Amy, and Spence reemerged, Amy and Spence tried out the see-saw.  Then Grandma had to show Spence how it is done. hahaha  Grandma really wanted us to take some pictures of Henlie in the pumpkin patch, but she had wandered off with Amy and Spence again, so we took Grandpa and found a good Henlie-sized pumpkin.  Grandpa also picked us a couple of apples from the tree.  When we got back to the house, Grandpa filled up a bag of apples for us to take home.  He also picked me a rose.  It smelled so good!  We have an awfully thoughtful and kind Grandpa :)




After a photo op with Grandma, we were on the road again.  We took a detour to AF to grab me some lunch (I was so hungry!), and then we stopped by the BSA office in Orem to drop off our cardboard (they recycle).  Then we drove to Provo to visit Grandma Covalt.  We had to give her an invite, too :)  I didn't take any pictures at Grandma Covalt's, but we chatted for a little while.  Henlie had fallen asleep on the way down again, but she did eventually wake up.  Grandma had a stuffed bear in a cupboard, and Henlie thought it was great.  Henlie also loved seeing her reflection in the TV :)  While we were there, Petco called to let us know Mocha was done getting groomed.  We chatted for a few minutes more and then went to pick up our puppy.





We went one step shorter this time on Mocha's shave - she looks freaking adorable (and a little silly comparatively).  This time, she got Halloween bows. So cute!


When we got home, I finally got to really eat my dinner, which was great :) to top off my busy day, I went visiting teaching that night.  Pretty successful, fun-filled day :)